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About the speaker :

Dr. Yaron Brook (M.B.A., University of Texas at Austin; Ph.D., Finance, University of Texas at Austin) is the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a leading advocate of Rand’s ideas. A former finance professor, he speaks internationally on such topics as the causes of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, and ending the growth of the state. Yaron is a columnist at Forbes.com, and his articles have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, and many other publications.

A frequent guest on a variety of national television programs, he is co-author of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea and contributing author of Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism. His newest book, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, co-authored with Don Watkins is now available. To follow Yaron and see his most current activities, please check out Yaron Brook and Don Watkin’s blog Laissez-Faire: The Uncompromised Case for Capitalism.

Born and raised in Israel, Yaron served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Yaron admits to being a socialist until the age of 16–then he read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Despite his best efforts to poke holes in Rand’s arguments, he couldn’t, and went on to become a student of Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism.

In the late 1980s, Yaron and his wife started thinking about where in the world they would want to live their lives and raise a family. Where could they find the greatest amount of freedom and the greatest amount of opportunity? The answer was clear, so in 1987 they emigrated to the United States. He would go on to become an American citizen in 2003.

Yaron received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he cofounded a financial advisory firm, BH Equity Research, of which he is presently managing director and chairman.

While in America, Yaron continued studying Ayn Rand’s philosophy. In the mid-1990s, he joined the Ayn Rand Institute’s new educational program, the Objectivist Graduate Center. It was in the OGC (now expanded into the Objectivist Academic Center) that Yaron deepened his knowledge of Objectivism, thanks to the efforts of teachers such as Rand’s heir, Leonard Peikoff, as well as leading Objectivist thinkers Harry Binswanger and Peter Schwartz.

It was also during this time that Yaron launched Lyceum International, an organization that for many years ran conferences on Objectivism.

In 2000 Yaron left teaching to become the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and go-to source for laissez-faire policy. Yaron’s field of speciaties include Objectivism (the philosophy of Ayn Rand), capitalism, finance, business ethics, venture capital, economics and foreign policy.